Top stories from alternative news sites

Yesterday I showed some of the top stories from leading news organizations on TV and in newspapers.


Today I look at some of the top stories from alternative (i.e., non-profit news organizations).


From Truthout:

An Inquiry Into the 9/11 Commission's 10th Anniversary Report: How to Read a Government Commission Report

By Mike Lofgren, Truthout | Op-Ed

The cover of the final 9/11 report, which can be purchased in bookstores across the United States and around the world. (Image via Wikipedia)One of the many things I learned in government is that the investigative commissions which inquire into a scandal, disaster or atrocity are usually intended to bury the real causes of the incident and trumpet other circumstantial or irrelevant details as if they are shocking or novel. In other words, commissions are cover-ups pretending to be exposés. This is not always the case, but as the stakes rise, it becomes the accepted practice.
One of the masters of this technique has been former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Indiana). He cut his teeth as chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, where he was careful to stop short of implicating President Ronald Reagan of impeachable criminal culpability, and, more importantly, provided the same service to the future President George H.W. Bush. A few smaller fries took the fall, and Reagan, the man whom Republicans retrospectively credit for making the sun shine and the rain fall, was chastised for not being in control of his own immediate subordinates. Bush, of course, was out of the loop. In 1992, Hamilton chaired the House October Surprise Task Force, and failed once again to find Bush culpable of criminal misdeeds.




From Common Dreams:

Brazil Farmers Say GMO Corn No Longer Resistant to Bugs

Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

Brazilian farmers say their GMO corn is no longer resistant to pests, Reuters reported Monday. The Association of Soybean and Corn...

From AlterNet:

Gaza: More Than 110 People Killed in Less Than 24 Hours

Harriet Sherwood

The Guardian

Gaza endured a night of relentless bombardment that brought some of the heaviest pounding since the start of the conflict three weeks ago.

Top 10 greedy people in America

You won't see much about this in the mainstream news, but Common Dreams has an article on America's top 10 greediest people:

America’s Greediest: The 2013 Top Ten

Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. You won’t find any of them in this latest annual list of America’s most avaricious. You will find wheelers and dealers and a candy store heiress.

by Sam Pizzigati

The headlines haven’t been particularly kind to America’s most relentlessly greedy over the past year. In just the last month alone, the world’s two most visible religious leaders — Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama — have once again dramatically denounced our global concentration of income and wealth. And the world’s most powerful political leader, Barack Obama, has chimed in, too.

The impact on America’s super rich — and super-rich wannabees? Not much. They haven’t even deigned to slow their grabbing.

At Too Much, the Institute for Policy Studies weekly on excess and inequality, we’ve been taking names. Lots of them. The greediest of them all? We think we can make a good case for the ten below. We hope you’ll find some useful insights from our choices — and maybe even some new incentive to help make our world a more equal place.

So who is the top 10? Check them out here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/18-2
(note: One is in my state of North Carolina!)

Stories NOT being told in the mainstream press

Why a Constitutional Law Professor Should Not Sign an Unconstitutional Military Detention Bill

Ralph Lopez, War Is A Crime

The War on Drug Addicts - and Everyone Else

Maya Schenwar, Truthout

New Documents Released of 2007 Iraq Atrocity by Troops

David Swanson, War Is A Crime.org

How Now, Brown Cloud: What Smog Hath Wrought

Michael Winship, Truthout

Group Challenges CIA's Worldwide 'Targeted Killing' Campaign

 

 

'Craigslist Killer' Case Highlights the Plight of America's Jobless

 

Israel Forms Corps for Strategic Strikes

 

Secret US, Taliban Talks Indicate Slow Road to Peace

 

Here is what Truthout and Common Cause are saying about it all

The People's Surveillance State

Police pepper spray students at a UC Davis demonstration on Friday, November 18. (Screengrab: OperationLeakS - Click here for video)

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

In the aftermath of September 11, there was a big push to create a national surveillance system in the name of national security. Cameras were installed at traffic lights, ostensibly to catch people running red lights and stop signs, but those cameras came with a nifty side benefit: they recorded everyone within reach of the lens in their comings and goings. Cameras were installed at street corners, ostensibly to provide security against crime, but again, you were recorded wherever you went. Bank machines all come with security cameras, and those added to the ever-broadening web of national surveillance. Finally, almost every cell phone now comes with...

Civil Society at Ground Zero: You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring

Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch | News Analysis

Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.»

Mellower Occupy Movement Grows in the Suburbs

 

Occupy Toronto Awaits Eviction Decision

  

 

 

The State versus the People

 

You gotta' love independent media for stories like these ... you won't see these stories in the mainstream press.

Check out Propublica, Truthout, and Common Dreams for more, among other sources.

 

 Just How Much Can the State Restrict a Peaceful Protest?

As protests supporting Occupy Wall Street have swelled in recent weeks, hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested across the U.S. This weekend, nearly 100 people were arrested in New York and 175 in Chicago. More than 100 protesters were arrested in Boston last week; a few weeks ago, 700 were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.

This Week's Occupy Evictions Were Systematically Plotted By The Nations Mayors

Conspiracy theorists are going to love this one. In an interview with the BBC, Mayor Quan admitted that she discussed dismantling Occupy Oakland with Mayors from 18 other cities.

A reminder why the independent news organizations are so important

Because you don't see stories like this in the mainstream press:

Anatomy of a $30 Billion Medicare Crime

Kathleen Sharp, Truthout

Don't Drink the Water: Tainted Water Flows from Taps of Rural Valley Homes

Mark Grossi, Fresno Bee

US Tax Policies Benefit Rich

Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.

62% of Americans Want Immediate Troop Cuts in Afghanistan

 

Bill McKibben:

The Cronyism Behind a Pipeline for Crude

And my two favorites:

CNN's Factcheck Failure on Occupy Wall Street

Fox News Offers Wall Street Protester an Interview but Doesn't Air It After He Slams Fox

Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress

Counter-terrorism news you're not seeing in the news

As we rapidly approach the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, now is the appropriate time to examine what they have really cost us.

So you'd expect the mainstream press to be looking at this issue. And to some degree, they are.

But only on independent news sites will you find stories like these. Together, they call into serious question America's "war on terror" (like it's war on crime and war on drugs, there are some benefits but also enormous costs).

We are spying on our own citizens.

We are infiltrating peace groups and non-Christian religious groups with no probable cause.

We are spending trillions of dollars (think: billions of dollars, millions of times).

We are killing innocent people.

For example:

From Truthout.org:

What a Difference a Decade Makes: Ten Years of "Homeland Security"

Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, "Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the 'Homeland'"

Landmines and Cluster Bombs: "Weapons of Mass Destruction in Slow Motion"

H. Patricia Hynes, Truthout

From CommonDreams.org:

 

Wikileaks Cable: Iraqi Children in US Raid Shot in Head

Food for thought.

Stories you almost never see in the mainstream press

In the book I explain how mainstream media are owned by large, for-profit corporations.

While there is still some variation in what news they cover, as well as how they cover it, the bottom line is certain stories are just less likely to make it to the airwaves. That is, corporate ownership of the press limits the breadth of the stories we see.

That is where organizations like Common Dreams come in. Common Dreams is a nonpartisan, independent media organization. Stories there today include:

Obama Sides w/ Panetta: Medicare Cuts Over Defense

 

US Court Allows Torture Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld

 

Protesters Spotlight Corporate Influence in State Politics at ALEC Annual Meeting

 

US Legacy in Iraq: Poverty, Violence, Political Instability

 

Federal Cuts Hurt Reading Program That Gives Books to Kids

 

 Plus ...

Barbara Ehrenreich:

Nickel and Dimed (2011 Version): On Turning Poverty into an American Crime

 

Mark Engler:

Starving Uncle Sam: Is the U.S. Teetering on the Edge of Bankruptcy?

 

... and more! These are stories largely being ignored by the corporate controlled media, ignored because they deal with issues of power and poverty.

Mountaintop removal=60,000 cancers

... making it more deadly than murder.

Yet, it remains perfectly legal, in spite of the immense damage it does to the environment and the inhabitants of an area.

The companies behind this basically have said, "Hey, there is West Virginia, they don't need those mountains."

And although citizens have been fighting it for decades, it continues, mostly because law-makers remain in the pockets of the companies.

But you rarely hear about this from the mainstream media.

This is the beauty of independent media, such as Common Dreams, free from the stranglehold of corporations.

Use these media if you want to learn about what is really dangerous. You won't learn it from Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, or CNN.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/07/27-2

A website you should check out

... if you are concerend about the corporate media and the stories they do not tell.

You might see it as "leftist" as they claim to be "progressive" but remember the root word of progressive is PROGRESS. As in making progress for where we are now to where we want to go.

Everyday there are great stores here that you rarely see in the mainstream press. Including today.

http://www.commondreams.org/

Alternative news site features "crimes" not often seen in the mainstream press

Check out Common Dreams, an alternative news cite that is not focused on or obsessed with street crime and trivial matters.

Here are some of their top stories today. You won't see these in the mainstream press:

NEWS

Amid WikiLeaks Storm, US Gov't Promotes Ellsberg Film

Sick Gulf Residents Beg Officials for Help

Report: Austerity Policies Worsen Racial Economic Inequalities, Hit Blacks and Latinos Hardest

Toxics Found in Pregnant U.S. Women in UCSF Study

Climate Change Could Happen Much Faster Than Previously Thought